tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6422857.post4970123586641050992..comments2016-06-25T19:29:59.191-04:00Comments on Biblical Evidence for Catholicism: Luther's Disgust Over Rampant Protestant Sectarianism and Radical Heresies, but Can't See the Connection to "Sola Scriptura"Dave Armstronghttps://plus.google.com/115516270318198347148noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6422857.post-52489074159114590552010-03-05T18:07:23.556-05:002010-03-05T18:07:23.556-05:00Contarini: Note that Aquinas says that God &quot;i...Contarini: Note that Aquinas says that God &quot;is not the cause of evil _as evil_. That is not the same as the view you ascribe to him, that God is simply &quot;not the cause of evil.&quot; <br /><br />Adomnan: I disagree: Aqulnas thought that evil was parasitic on good, a defect of the good, and had no being in itself. Therefore, there couldn&#39;t be any evil without a good &quot;host,&quot; so to speak, which God had created. God is the cause of everything that is good -- has being -- in an occurrence of evil, but not the cause of the defect of being, the evil as evil. <br /><br />And that&#39;s exactly what Aquinas wrote: &quot;But whatever good is bound up with the evil has God as its cause.&quot; <br /><br />So God is not the cause of evil, according to Aquinas; but he is, according to Luther. <br /><br />Contarini: if anything Aquinas&#39;s position is more open to the charge of internal incoherence than Luther&#39;s<br /><br />Adomnan: I don&#39;t see the incoherence in Aquinas. His position makes perfect sense. <br /><br />If Luther had simply said that God was both good and evil or that good and evil were categories for us, but had no application to God, then he would have have been coherent, if heretical. However, he tries to maintain that God is the cause of evil while remaining good Himself; and he does this by blaming evil on God&#39;s passive &quot;tools&quot; instead of on God, which is absurd.<br /><br />Contarini: And I&#39;m not claiming that he wanted to keep people ignorant about his views. <br /><br />Adomnan: It&#39;s not so much this that bothers me. Rather, he tells the Christians in Antwerp that it is wrong to pry into God&#39;s &quot;sufferance&quot; of evil, and then he does so himself. If his position is that it&#39;s wrong for others to do it, but he can do it, then this obviously undercuts his basic claim, his excuse for overturning church authority, that divine revelation is clear and accessible to everybody and can be discovered and understood by any ploughboy who reads the Bible.Adomnanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15746373228302022418noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6422857.post-57216380458201770732010-03-05T16:13:14.091-05:002010-03-05T16:13:14.091-05:00Adomnan,
Note that Aquinas says that God &quot;is...Adomnan,<br /><br />Note that Aquinas says that God &quot;is not the cause of evil _as evil_.&quot; That is not the same as the view you ascribe to him, that God is simply &quot;not the cause of evil.&quot; You are oversimplifying Aquinas&#39; position in order to exaggerate the difference between him and Luther. I agree that there is a difference, and I agree that Aquinas&#39;s position is much preferable. But both Luther and Aquinas are trying to make sense of the same very difficult paradoxes, and if anything Aquinas&#39;s position is more open to the charge of internal incoherence than Luther&#39;s, precisely because Aquinas (rightly) is far more concerned than Luther to preserve free will.<br /><br />As for Luther addressing a different audience--Luther wrote in a lively and colloquial way no matter what the context. And I&#39;m not claiming that he wanted to keep people ignorant about his views. (In fact, I expected that to be the next charge--but I did you an injustice there, since you rightly recognize that Luther clearly knew that what he wrote to ERasmus would be well known in educated circles.) Still, he was engaging in a learned discussion with one of the great intellectuals of his age. And believe it or not, _Bondage_ is about as technical and &quot;scholastic&quot; as Luther ever got (in his mature writings).Contarinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16602533442067190380noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6422857.post-41858769351423307672010-03-05T11:05:16.972-05:002010-03-05T11:05:16.972-05:00No doubt Luther (and Calvin) would have agreed wit...No doubt Luther (and Calvin) would have agreed with the biologist, Ben. I see that one of the people who commented on that article actually reproduced Luther&#39;s argument:<br /><br />&quot;Free will cannot exist if the concept of &quot;God&quot; holds true. A being that knows everything and created everything (and) whose sight is irrespective of time predetermines everything within your life simply by creating you. <br /><br />&quot;Free will IS an illusion, especially if you believe in a Judeo-Christian god.&quot;<br /><br />Now, forget about Luther and Calvin. What would JESUS think about that?Adomnanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15746373228302022418noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6422857.post-69036731713109996302010-03-04T23:20:19.039-05:002010-03-04T23:20:19.039-05:00This comment has been removed by the author.Ben Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16971132944684765473noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6422857.post-39873466064809066782010-03-04T19:05:02.647-05:002010-03-04T19:05:02.647-05:00Contarini: &quot;God, being omnipotent, is the cau...Contarini: &quot;God, being omnipotent, is the cause of everything.&quot;<br /><br />and<br /><br />&quot;I can&#39;t see that Luther&#39;s position is any more inconsistent than that of, say, Aquinas, though of course Aquinas is more systematic and nuanced in the way he works it out.&quot;<br /><br />Adomnan: Here is a short passage from chapter 141 of Thomas Aquinas&#39;s Compendium of Theology:<br /><br />&quot;Although God is the universal cause of all things, He is not the cause of evil as evil. But whatever good is bound up with the evil has God as its cause.&quot;<br /><br />This corrobates my point that &quot;God, being good, is the cause only of good, and not of evil.&quot;Adomnanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15746373228302022418noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6422857.post-39251333350226492062010-03-04T17:19:53.091-05:002010-03-04T17:19:53.091-05:00I disagree with your analysis, Contarini.
The poi...I disagree with your analysis, Contarini.<br /><br />The point of &quot;The Bondage of the Will&quot; is that human beings, and indeed all rational creatures, lack a free will. Only God has a free will. Therefore, God freely wills everything that happens, including evil. Human beings, be they good or evil, have no ability freely to will anything. Their wills are &quot;bound.&quot; If an event is freely willed, it can only be God who wills it (freely). <br /><br />Contarini: 1. God wills only good<br /><br />Adomnan: This is contradicted by Luther&#39;s statement, which I cited above: &quot;God foreknows nothing by contingency, but that he foreknows, purposes, and does all things according to his immutable, eternal, and infallible will.&quot;<br /><br />Contarini: 2. God, being omnipotent, is the cause of everything.<br /><br />Adomnan: I agree with you that Luther is asserting this, but it is a heresy. The orthodox and Catholic position is that God, being good, is the cause only of good, and not of evil. <br /><br />Contarini: 3. When God&#39;s good will accomplishes itself through sinful instruments, sin will result.<br /><br />Adomnan: &quot;Instruments&quot; are not evil; the wielder of the instruments is evil, just as it&#39;s not tools that make a table, but a carpenter makes the table using his tools. You are attempting, as Luther did, to blame evil on the tools, rather than the user of the tools, which is an abusive use of language; i.e., of the meaning of tool/instrument. Even a willing tool is merely a tool if he does not will freely. <br /><br />Contarini: 4. God brings about good through that evil.<br /><br />Adomnan: True. God can bring good out of evil, but without ever willing or causing the evil.<br /><br />Contarini: I&#39;ll grant that there is clearly a difference between how Luther addresses these subjects in a theological treatise like _Bondage_ and how he is going to address it in a letter intended for laypeople. Luther was very explicit that predestination is not something you want to bring up around nontheologians.<br /><br />Adomnan: The argument that Luther was (apparently) inconsistent because he was addressing laypeople rather than theologians is not convincing. Luther&#39;s debate with Erasmus was very public, as Luther knew it would be. It wasn&#39;t as if he were addressing a closed seminar of theologians. His popular, homespun style in &quot;The Bondage of the Will,&quot; with its pack animals ridden by God or the devil and the rest, shows that he was not speaking &quot;technically&quot; to a select few but addressing the masses.<br /><br />Moreover,it is more than a merely apparent inconsistency to say in one place that God wills sin and in another that He doesn&#39;t. And there is the moral inconistency in Luther&#39;s engaging himself in a discussion of God&#39;s participation in sin and evil while telling others that no Christian should ever do this: &quot;As to his sufferance of sin, we ought not to approach the question.&quot; Finally, if Luther was in fact deliberately saying contradictory things to different audiences. which would be duplicity, then that would raise a moral issue that goes beyond mere inconsistency.Adomnanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15746373228302022418noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6422857.post-19470355138277999682010-03-04T15:08:34.693-05:002010-03-04T15:08:34.693-05:00I don&#39;t see any inconsistency here. Luther&#39...I don&#39;t see any inconsistency here. Luther&#39;s point in _Bondage_ is that evil comes from our sinful wills--God&#39;s omnipotence makes Him the cause of everything, and thus God&#39;s good will works itself out even through evil instruments. Now if we ask _how_ this can be, at that point Luther would throw up his hands and say &quot;we can&#39;t know this--it&#39;s a mystery and we should let it be.&quot; What we can say is that<br />1. God wills only good<br />2. God, being omnipotent, is the cause of everything<br />3. When God&#39;s good will accomplishes itself through sinful instruments, sin will result; and yet<br />4. God brings about good through that evil<br /><br />I can&#39;t see that Luther&#39;s position is any more inconsistent than that of, say, Aquinas, though of course Aquinas is more systematic and nuanced in the way he works it out. <br /><br />I&#39;ll grant that there is clearly a difference between how Luther addresses these subjects in a theological treatise like _Bondage_ and how he is going to address it in a letter intended for laypeople. Luther was very explicit that predestination is not something you want to bring up around nontheologians. So sure, there&#39;s &quot;inconsistency&quot; in the sense that he&#39;s going to call &quot;mystery&quot; sooner when addressing the &quot;Christians of Antwerp&quot; than when arguing with Erasmus. But I wouldn&#39;t call that inconsistency. (I actually don&#39;t engage in this &quot;inconsistency&quot; enough, which is one of my flaws as a teacher--I try to explain complex things to intro classes and confuse them.)Contarinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16602533442067190380noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6422857.post-75325091443037395102010-03-02T23:31:57.584-05:002010-03-02T23:31:57.584-05:00Edward Reiss: Then how can you maintain that &quot...Edward Reiss: Then how can you maintain that &quot;Luther is not entirely consistent&quot;? Are the contexts the same in the two quotes? <br /><br />Adomnan: Mr. Reiss, you&#39;ve ignored most of my answer and yet are asking more questions. I don&#39;t see why I should do all the writing here. <br /><br />Now, if you think the contexts of these quotes undermine any claim of inconsistency, then you provide the context of each and you explain what Luther meant in each, in a way that shows they are completely consistent once context is taken into account. I&#39;ve said my piece. Now you say yours.Adomnanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15746373228302022418noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6422857.post-2937726151326076542010-03-02T22:00:43.499-05:002010-03-02T22:00:43.499-05:00Adomnan,
&quot;It&#39;s hard to say. The statemen...Adomnan,<br /><br />&quot;It&#39;s hard to say. The statement is internally inconsistent, and so I&#39;m not sure I can make sense out of it. &quot;<br /><br />Then how can you maintain that &quot;Luther is not entirely consistent&quot;? Are the contexts the same in the two quotes? Remember, Jesus said that he came not to judge and that he came to judge. Would you say Jesus is not entirely consistent? I wouldn&#39;t.Edward Reisshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07099195433395115204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6422857.post-6932516902479972702010-03-02T17:46:53.387-05:002010-03-02T17:46:53.387-05:00Edward Reiss: What do you think he was trying to s...Edward Reiss: What do you think he was trying to say here?<br /><br />Adomnan: It&#39;s hard to say. The statement is internally inconsistent, and so I&#39;m not sure I can make sense out of it. <br /><br />However, I&#39;d guess that Luther is trying to say that there is only one free will in the universe (God&#39;s), which is why he denies that men have free will in &quot;The Bondage of the Will.&quot; <br /><br />Since God&#39;s will is the only free will, it follows that everything that happens is actually willed by God, and so God wills evil just as much as good. In other words, Luther is positing a sort of determinism based on a single all-powerful will (rather like Schopenhauer, actually). <br /><br />This seems to be confirmed in another quote from this work:<br /><br />&quot;God foreknows nothing by contingency, but that he foreknows, purposes, and does all things according to his immutable, eternal, and infallible will. By this thunderbolt, Free-will is thrown prostrate, and utterly dashed to pieces. (Cole, p. 26)&quot;<br /><br />At the same time, Luther, for some reason, is unwilling to reject the traditional teaching that God is good (or solely good as opposed to both good and evil), although he doesn&#39;t hesitate to describe God&#39;s will as the cause of evil.<br /><br />Luther tries to divorce God from the evil He wills by making an absurd distinction between a &quot;good&quot; God and His &quot;evil&quot; tools, which is why I said at the onset that Luther&#39;s views here don&#39;t make sense. It&#39;s as if Luther were to claim that a table, say, were not the creation of the carpenter who made it, but of the carpenter&#39;s tools. If evil men are God&#39;s &quot;tools,&quot; then God is directly responsible for the evil they do. That&#39;s implied in the very notion of a tool. <br /><br />Now, you may disagree with my analysis of what Luther is &quot;trying to say here&quot; or you may not. In any event, Luther&#39;s views on determinism and God&#39;s participation in evil may have varied with his moods, which would make it impossible to nail them down. <br /><br />The essential point I was making in my posting is that Luther sometimes contradicts himself. For example, the passage under discussion is inconsistent with -- or can quite reasonably be seen as inconsistent with -- what he says in his letter to Antwerp; i.e., that &quot;it is sufficient to know that God wills no sin&quot; and that one should not even speculate about why He permits (&quot;suffers&quot;) sin. And yet Luther himself engages in such speculation!<br /><br />With a person as self-contradictory as (bipolar?) Luther, it may well be pointless to seek &quot;contexts&quot; that incontrovertibly define what are in fact inconsistent, constantly shifting views.Adomnanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15746373228302022418noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6422857.post-56369602041043929702010-03-02T15:29:54.199-05:002010-03-02T15:29:54.199-05:00Adomnan,
You cited Luther thus:
&quot;God works ...Adomnan,<br /><br />You cited Luther thus:<br /><br />&quot;God works evil in us, i.e., by means of us, not through any fault of his, but owing to our faultiness, since we are by nature evil and he is good; but as he carries us along by his own activity in accordance with the nature of his omnipotence, good as he is himself he cannot help but do evil with an evil instrument, though he makes good use of this evil in accordance with his wisdom for his own glory and our salvation.&quot;<br /><br />What do you think he was trying to say here?Edward Reisshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07099195433395115204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6422857.post-88487649817737950502010-03-01T21:24:22.559-05:002010-03-01T21:24:22.559-05:00Luther in &quot;Bondage of the Will&quot;:
&quot;...Luther in &quot;Bondage of the Will&quot;:<br /><br />&quot;God works evil in us, i.e., by means of us, not through any fault of his, but owing to our faultiness, since we are by nature evil and he is good; but as he carries us along by his own activity in accordance with the nature of his omnipotence, good as he is himself he cannot help but do evil with an evil instrument, though he makes good use of this evil in accordance with his wisdom for his own glory and our salvation.&quot;<br /><br />Luther in &quot;Letter of Doctor Martin to the Christians of Antwerp&quot;:<br /><br />&quot;It is sufficient for us to know that God wills no sin. As to his sufferance of sin, we ought not to approach the question. The servant is not to know his master&#39;s secrets, simply his master&#39;s orders: how much less should a poor creature attempt to scrutinize or sound the mysteries and the majesty of the Creator?&quot;<br /><br />So, from &quot;God works evil in us&quot; to &quot;it is sufficient for us to know God wills no sin,&quot; and from &quot;he carries us along,...good as he is, he cannot help but do evil&quot; to &quot;as to his sufferance of sin, we ought not to approach the question.&quot; Right, he says we &quot;ought not to approach the question,&quot; but in &quot;Bondage of the Will,&quot; Luther is all over it. <br /><br />So we can see that Luther is not entirely consistent. I suppose that Swan could compare these two statements, say that whichever he prefers is the proper &quot;context&quot; and so refutes the other, and then accuse Dave (or anyone who merely cites either of these two statements anywhere) of taking Luther out of context.<br /><br />I guess I just spared Swan the trouble.Adomnanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15746373228302022418noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6422857.post-33436280478411408282010-03-01T17:18:11.931-05:002010-03-01T17:18:11.931-05:00P.S. I should note the Lydia McGrew is a good egg ...P.S. I should note the Lydia McGrew is a good egg and invaluable for her work exposing abortionist nonsense.romishgraffitihttp://romishgraffiti.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6422857.post-19527945234273675922010-03-01T17:14:15.914-05:002010-03-01T17:14:15.914-05:00On a somewhat related note, if you ever get around...On a somewhat related note, if you ever get around to the blog <a href="http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2010/02/whats_black_and_white_and_misr.html" rel="nofollow">What&#39;s Wrong with the World</a>, there is a discussion about the reduction of all to private judgement, which I know you have disputed with others about before. Ed Feser makes an analogy I thought pretty good in the comments:<br /><br /><i>Take, by analogy, a system of law which governs a country. The laws are passed by a legislature, interpreted by the courts, enforced by the executive. A supreme court has the final say over what the law means. Now obviously all of this presupposes that the citizens have the basic linguistic skills to understand what the laws mean at a prima facie level; the law doesn&#39;t create that understanding but takes it for granted. It would be silly to conclude from that, though, that law is a matter of private interpretation. It isn&#39;t: Usually the meaning is clear enough, but when it isn&#39;t, the courts and the legislature are the ones who decide, not the individual citizen. Similarly, there are circumstances where an individual citizen might have to &quot;make the call&quot; on the spot regarding what a certain law means and whether or not it applies to a given situation. Am I allowed to fish in this specific river or not? Can I shoot this trespasser if he&#39;s on my porch or does he have to be in the house? The law might allow for a certain degree of discretion or leave certain things vague. At the end of the day, though, if a decision has to be made about such things, it is going to be the courts and legislature that does it, not the private citizen. And it would be silly to pretend that these qualifications and complications to a real-world system of law show that it is &quot;really&quot; the individual citizen who determines the law, that it is all at bottom a matter of private interpretation.<br /><br />By the same token, yes, of course what the Church says about the Bible presupposes a basic understanding of language, principles of logic, etc. And of course there are going to be cases where the individual has to decide how to apply a certain principle taught by the Church. But it simply doesn&#39;t follow that the Catholic view &quot;therefore&quot; reduces after all to &quot;private interpretation,&quot; any more than the nuances in law referred to above show that it is &quot;really&quot; the individual citizen who determines what the law is.</i><br /><br /><br />Scott W.romishgraffitihttp://romishgraffiti.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.com